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Allen earns breakthrough victory at Thunder Road

BARRE – The hometown drivers continue to clean up at Barre’s Thunder Road this season. Sophomore Late Model competitor Jason Allen scored the first win of his young career on Thursday night.

Allen, who began in the Street Stock class at Thunder Road in the late 2000s, is the fourth Barre-based driver to win a Late Model race this year, and is the sixth Washington County racer to carry the checkered flag. Only point leader Derrick O’Donnell — who hails from North Haverhill, N.H. and had a rough night on Thursday — has taken trophies away from the locals this season.

He passed Northfield’s Matt White on lap 27 of the 50-lap main event for the win, which was also his first top-10 finish of the year.

O’Donnell spun in both his heat and the feature before finishing 14th, but not all was lost; he won the annual Calkins Portable Toilets/WDEV Radio “Port-A-Potty Grand Prix” race at intermission, in which teams of people push outhouse-shaped carts down the frontstretch. O’Donnell retained his Late Model championship lead on Sweet, though it was trimmed from 26 points to just 19.

Jason Woodard finally captured his first Tiger Sportsman victory in a two-segment, cumulatively scored feature. The Waterbury driver won the division’s 2014 track championship despite not winning a race and had been tantalizingly close in the first half of this season. He beat Milton’s Dylan Payea in a tie-breaker for the win, followed by rookie Stephen Donahue of Graniteville, Mike Billado of Essex, and Barre’s Cameron Ouellette. Billado and Brendan Moodie won the 20-lap segments.

Donny Yates of North Montpelier became the second repeat winner of the year in the Street Stocks. He avoided an incident on the opening lap that saw Patrick Tibbetts spin Jennifer Getty around in front of the field, then sped to the win in front of Billy Hennequin, Tyler Austin, Jamie Davis, and Bunker Hodgdon.

Justin St. Louis is a motorsports journalist, publicist, broadcaster, and former driver. Email: jstlouis1315@gmail.com Twitter: @Justin_StLouis